


Fight Like A Blind Man

by AtropaAzraelle (Polyoxyethylene)



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Gen, M/M, Sparring, Tough Love, background Gladnis - Freeform, frank discussion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-28
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-29 07:30:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17199212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polyoxyethylene/pseuds/AtropaAzraelle
Summary: Aranea finds Ignis practicing and offers to spar, but the bigger fight is against his own refusal to acknowledge what he's become.





	Fight Like A Blind Man

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Swordy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Swordy/gifts).



> A Christmas gift for Swordy, who requested Aranea pushing Ignis to deal with his shit. Thank you for all your moral support, and help with my work over the past year. I think there were a few points that I'd have lost it without you, and I'm more than lucky to count you as a friend. I hope this is to your liking.

There was a ring of training dummies, or what passed for dummies these days. Really they were sacks stuffed with rags, held up by poles. When the enemies you were fighting were no longer human shaped there was no real point in training against humanoid targets.

Someone had attached a bell to each dummy. They gave tiny little tinkling rings every time a dagger struck home. Ignis stood in the centre of the ring, sweat beading his skin, his hair sticking to his forehead, throwing his weapons in a viciously accurate underarm into each dummy in turn. The smoked glasses he'd been wearing in Tenebrae were still firmly perched on his face, as if they did anything to hide the fact he could see nothing.

“We should get you some different bells,” Aranea said, when he'd completed a turn, “you could play us a tune.”

His shoulders dropped as he leaned forward, catching his breath, and then rose again as he stood tall and proud once more. Between the flush of his glistening skin and the second it took him to respond it was clear he'd been at it for a while. “I heard you come in,” he said.

“I should hope so,” she replied. She believed him; if he could hear those bells over the sound of his own efforts than he'd have definitely heard her boots. “How's your training going?”

There it was. Aranea wondered if he was aware of his own tells when he could no longer see other people's faces, or if that one had just slipped by him. The tightening of his lips, the brief flex of a muscle in his neck that showed he'd just gritted his teeth. “Well,” he answered, “but it'll be a while before I can rejoin the field.”

Was that his decision, or lover boy's? She'd seen them together, hell you barely ever saw Ignis without Gladio around, or you hadn't in the first few months. Now though, now things were getting pushed, and every able hand was needed to shepherd refugees and locate food. So Gladio was out there, doing his part to save the world.

Ignis didn't count as an able hand, so he got stuck in here, throwing daggers at bells.

It was pissing him off. You could see it. The dark glasses and prim suit, currently minus the jacket and with an extra button undone in a nod towards the exertion, did nothing to cover the tone of his voice, or the way he held his shoulders as if he was ready for a fight just because the subject had come up.

“It'll be even longer if all you're learning to fight against are some sacks,” she said, and watched that muscle jump in his jaw again. “What do you say to a real spar?”

It was like she'd said some magic words. His defensive posture relaxed into something a little prouder, and the tightness of his mouth eased into a small, wry smile. “Only if you don't go easy on me.”

Aranea could have laughed. “I didn't get to where I am by going easy on people,” she told him. The smile it earned her was worth it. 

That was the first smile she'd seen Ignis wear since they'd battled their way through Steyliff Grove together. Back then he'd been charming, polite, and just a little bit overconfident. He was still trying to seem that now, but it rang hollow. He'd lost so much, and if you looked, really looked at him, you could see how he was trying to hold everything he had left together without letting the chaos out.

Can't make other people deal with what he's feeling, after all. That just wasn't Ignis.

“If you'd be so good as to help me clear a space?” he asked.

They tucked the dummies back up against the wall, out of the way, ready for the next time Ignis needed them. The bells weren't to help him locate them, he'd explained, they were just so that he knew when he'd hit. The idea had been shortcake's. They were trying to figure out how to get some moving targets going too, but when they'd tried fixing a target to a string on the ceiling and set it swinging it had spun wildly at the first hit and needed to be reset. No one wanted to risk a dagger glancing off a target and ricocheting into some bystander that might be watching.

When the dummies were moved Aranea pulled out her lance. “So how much sparring have you done?” she asked, watching Ignis take a drink of water from a metal canteen and then carefully set it down again next to his stick.

“I spar with Gladio when he's in town,” Ignis answered, that slightly clipped, tense tone returning to his voice. “It's been a couple of weeks,” he added.

“You thought about asking anyone else?” she asked.

“They're all rather occupied with the refugee crisis,” Ignis answered. Aranea had to give him credit for that one; you could barely hear that note of resentment. He would have been a great politician one day.

“And you wouldn't want to be a burden,” she replied, watching Ignis's lips purse as he licked the inside of them. “Well,” she warned, “I'm not lover boy, so give me your best shot and I'll match it.”

“I'd rather you give me your best shot and I'll match that.”

Aranea laughed. That had come from somewhere deep down where it had been long buried; it was too quick to be anything else. Peeling back those layers was going to be fun. Maybe they'd find the old Ignis, the one that was actually confident, and wake him back up. “You asked for it.”

It took her about thirty seconds to get him on the floor the first time, which was twenty seconds longer than she'd have given him if she'd been asked to make the call first. He'd sidestepped out of her way when she'd moved in, and brought his lance up to fend hers off when she'd swung, and he'd even moved to swing the butt of it at her back.

But she'd caught her leg around the back of his and swept it out from under him before he'd got there. He'd landed on his back with a look of surprise that had quickly melted into annoyance.

“I won't pull my punches,” she told him, leaning on her lance. “You shouldn't either.”

Ignis gave a huff and clambered back to his feet. “One could argue that leg sweeps are unfair,” he said, brushing invisible dust off his shirt sleeves.

“Only 'cause you can't see them coming,” Aranea replied.

He twitched, his head turning a degree towards her and then stopping. Aranea waited to see if there'd be more of a reaction than that. How often had everyone skirted around the subject of his blindness, coaching it in terms of _extra difficulties_? What it really was, was the loss of an entire way of life. Ignis had gone from being able to see an incoming attack, match a person's words to their microexpressions, read people and rooms and fights as easily as he'd read a book, to having to do his shirt buttons up by feel alone every morning.

Had he ever acknowledged how much he'd lost, or had it all been downplayed so that he didn't become an emotional burden, as well as a physical one?

“Again?” he asked.

Aranea smirked. “Just tell me when you want to stop.”

She didn't catch him out with the same dirty trick again, but Aranea always had others up her sleeve. She caught his lance in her own hand and wrenched it around, separating it from its owner with a vicious kick that probably hurt more because of her heeled boots. The next time she stepped to the side of him, like they were partners in a bladed dance, and landed him a solid blow across the small of his back that knocked his balance right off. On another try she pushed him back, and back, and back with a flurry of attacks that didn't give him space to retaliate.

Ignis went down again, and again, and again. And he got back up and come back for more again, and again, and again. He never fell for the same trick twice, even when she tried to combine them and struck him across the back before dropping down to sweep his leg out from under him. He jumped over her foot like he knew it was coming, and she had to dodge quickly to avoid the lance that came down just where her shoulder had been.

That was good, but Aranea didn't get the time to think about it. Ignis didn't let up, turning her own tricks against her, forcing her to back up in the face of sweeping strikes and vicious thrusts or take the hit.

She jumped. The ceilings weren't high enough for her to get the air she wanted, but there was just enough space for her to get clear of Ignis, and then bring her lance down.

Metal clanged against metal as he brought his lance up to block, forcing her down next to him instead of on top of him. With the blade embedded in the floor she used the lance as a pole, swinging herself around it to land a kick at the side of Ignis's head that knocked his glasses off and sent him sprawling.

Ignis thumped the ground with a fist as he got back to his knees. His glasses had landed a few feet to his right, out of reach. He brought one gloved hand up to his sightless eyes, searching for them.

“That was pretty good,” Aranea told him. He'd almost had her. If the ceiling had been lower, he would have done.

“Not good enough,” he muttered.

“Well, you can't see,” she agreed.

He turned his head again, and Aranea saw it, that desire in him to argue, to fight back. Instead he turned away again and took a deep breath. “No.”

“You weren't perfect even when you could,” Aranea told him. “I've seen you land on your ass at least this many times in actual fights before now.” His hands tightened into fists as she approached him. Aranea wondered if his knuckles were white under the gloves, gripping onto his self control like that.

“I'm still not back up to standard,” he said, quietly. It sounded like something he'd heard a dozen times, probably from his own lips.

“Then stop trying to fight like you can see.” She came to a stop beside him and rested the tip of her lance on the ground. “You'll never be back where you were. Things have changed, you need to change with them or you'll be stuck throwing daggers at bells forever.”

His chest heaved, but it didn't look like it was his body fighting to recover used oxygen after a fight. It looked like a man keeping his claws in his temper, hanging on to it with everything he had. “I don't require a lecture,” he said, finally, shifting back to his feet.

“You don't require those glasses either,” Aranea said, “but you're so busy trying to pretend you can be as good as you were that you don't realise it's holding you back.”

He stood, his shoulders stiff and back straight as he faced her. “I know I'm not as good as I was,” he replied, all clipped and severe, sounding like a pissy teacher talking to a challenging pupil.

“If I put a blindfold on you'd kick my ass around this room,” she said. His expression changed, his lips parting and his shoulders drawing back. “I bet if we put a blindfold on lover boy he wouldn't stand a chance.”

“My enemies won't share my handicap,” Ignis pointed out.

Aranea smiled. It was the first time she'd had heard him call it that. It was the first time she'd heard _anyone_ call it that.“No, they won't,” she agreed, “but you're already better at fighting blind than any of us would be. So stop trying to fight like us, and figure out how to fight like you.”

He turned towards her, one eye open and showing a milky white film over the pupil and iris. She'd never asked how he'd gone blind, and she'd never seen his eyes without their shield of darkened glass. The other eye was closed, the eyelid thickened with scar tissue. Whatever he'd gone through, it looked brutal. “There isn't a lot of time for me to learn from scratch again.”

“There's enough. You don't have to be perfect to be out there. You weren't before.”

Ignis closed that eye again and turned his head. “Did you see where my glasses went?” he asked, his voice quiet. Aranea hoped he was taking in what she was saying.

Aranea glanced down at the spectacles lying on the floor. They were his little shield. When he had those on it was easy for him to pretend to everyone that he was just fine. She picked them up. “You done for today?” she asked, turning the glasses over in her hands.

“Perhaps there's time for one more round,” he replied.

Aranea tapped his glasses against his hand. He turned his hand over instinctively, palm up for them. “Are you going to fight like a blind man this time?” she asked, as his fingers closed around the lenses.

She relinquished her grip, letting him pull the glasses away. To her surprise, he slipped them into his shirt pocket and gave her the tiniest of nods. “Why not?”


End file.
